Deap Capital Management & Trust (DEAPCAP) Plc has formally completed its corporate name change to Critical Minerals Financing Corp (CMFC) Plc, marking a significant milestone in the company’s strategic evolution into a specialised mining, metals, commodities finance, and investment group.
The completion of the name change followed receipt of all requisite regulatory approvals and filings.
The transition positioned CMFC at the centre of Nigeria’s financial and commercial ecosystem as it expands across the mining and critical minerals value chain.
In a regulatory filing at the Nigerian Exchange (NGX), the company also stated that it has relocated its corporate headquarters to Number One Lagos, 1 Akin Adesola Street, Victoria Island, Lagos.
Chairman, Critical Minerals Financing Corp (CMFC) Plc, Mr Lamon Rutten, said the transition reflected CMFC’s sharpened focus on capital structuring, investment banking, transaction advisory, project development support, and financing solutions for stakeholders across the minerals and commodities sector.
According to him, the completion of the transition to Critical Minerals Financing Corp Plc marks the beginning of an exciting new phase for the company.
Rutten, who is also a founding Chief Executive Officer of Saudi Mining Exchange and Mumbai Commodity Exchange (MCX), said, “We are strategically positioned to deliver world-class capital structuring, advisory, and financing solutions to mining and metals companies operating across gold, copper, cobalt, lithium, tungsten, tin, tantalum, and other critical mineral sectors.”
He noted that CMFC’s strategy is focused on addressing the significant financing and transaction-structuring gap within Africa’s mining industry by combining global financial expertise, sector-specific knowledge, and strategic partnerships.
President & Co-CEO, Critical Minerals Financing Corp (CMFC) Plc, Dr Israel Ovirih said CMFC is currently strengthening its governance, operational, and financial frameworks in preparation for its next growth phase.
According to him, the company would leverage strategic partnerships, regional expansion, and participation in large-scale mining and commodities transactions across Africa to unlock value for national economic growth and sustainable returns to stakeholders.
He said the company would work closely with mining companies, commodity traders, institutional investors, development finance institutions, governments, and international partners to build a dynamic ecosystem that supports industrial development, beneficiation, and export growth.
He pointed out that CMFC believes Africa is uniquely positioned to become a leading supplier of strategic mineral resources to the world, citing rising global demand for critical minerals driven by energy transition technologies, battery manufacturing, advanced industrial applications, and renewable energy infrastructure.
Shareholders of DEAPCAP had, at their annual general meeting in March 2026 in Ikeja, Lagos, unanimously approved the holistic transformation of the company into Critical Minerals Financing Corporation (CMFC) Plc, Africa’s premier private-sector minerals finance group.
At the well-attended meeting, excited shareholders unanimously approved several joint resolutions to change the name of the company, approve strategic restructuring, raise additional capital globally, implement strategic enterprise transformation initiatives and gave the board of the company powers to enter into domestic and global alliances as part of the birth of a new corporation to lead Africa’s mining sector into a new era of home-grown value-addition and shared prosperity.
Banklink Africa Private Equities Limited, the new core investor in CMFC, has injected some N6 billion into the company under a strategic recapitalisation aimed at repositioning CMFC for sustainable growth.
CMFC is expected to deploy its leveraged resources and competencies into the full realisation and valorisation of a pipeline of transactions across Nigeria, and subsequently Africa.
The company has also secured several high-net-worth global investors from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Europe, with plans underway to further explore the existing pipeline of investment commitments from across the globe.
Speaking on the outlook for the company shortly after the approval at the AGM, Rutten had outlined that the new company would have remarkable multiplier effects on Africa’s global positioning by domesticating values from the continent’s natural resources within the countries through full optimisation of the minerals value chain.
He said the company, with its Nigerian origin, would gradually build up its businesses by exploring immediate deals within the Nigerian minerals sector, using the Nigerian experience as a showcase of competence and potential to convince other African economies.
He noted that the emergence of CMFC aligns with Nigeria’s economic diversification agenda, pointing out that by optimising the value chain of its critical minerals, Nigeria could deepen economic growth and spread prosperity across the country.
“CMFC would invest in portfolio companies across the entire minerals value chain. In the upstream segment, we will be active in exploration funding, pre-feasibility studies, feasibility studies, mine development and expansion, mechanisation and fleet financing.
“In the midstream, CMFC will connect funding to refining and smelting businesses, beneficiation plants, processing infrastructure, concentrate and intermediate product manufacturing. At the end, we will complete the cycle with bespoke financing solutions to downstream operators such as commodity trading, long-term offtake partnerships, metal storage and logistics and resource- backed financing instruments. So, you have a whole gamut of valorisation of the minerals sector, with profound multiplier effects across the country,” Rutten said.
According to him, while Africa boasts of more than 30 per cent of global mineral reserves, these have remained largely underexplored and undercapitalised. But growing interest from the private sector in exploration and beneficiation now presents a significant opportunity to bridge the critical financing gap undermining the continent’s growth.
